You’d
be hard pressed to find a better cast in a mainstream movie this year than the
one assembled for Now You See Me. You have five Oscar nominees – two of them
winners – and even the actors that haven’t been anointed by the Academy are
excellent in their own way. The movie is about magicians, who are really
thieves and con men, and really, really wants to be the most clever movie of
the year. The fact that the cast is so good helps to hide the fact that the
movie isn’t half as clever as it thinks it is. The movie wants to be Ocean’s
11, but doesn’t really come all that close. It’s amusing to watch this great
cast have fun for a while, but as the movie drags on, I grew bored.

The
movie opens by introducing us to four different magicians – the cocky asshole
J. Daniel Atlas (Jessie Eisenberg) who is a master at sleight of hand and card
tricks, Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) a “mentalist”, Henley Reeves (Isla
Fisher) – an escape artist, and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), a pickpocket (and
yes, that’s apparently a magician). They are all brought together by some
mysterious, hooded being – and a year later they’re performing together in Las
Vegas. When they somehow seemingly manage to teleport a French man to his bank
in Paris, and steal $3 million, they draw a lot of attention – including the
FBI, who has Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) investigate, and Interpol, who sends
Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent) to work with Rhodes. There’s also Thaddeus Bradley
(Morgan Freeman), who debunks magicians, an Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine),
the magician’s extremely rich financial backer. Everyone is being played –
especially the audience.

The
cast certainly has a lot of fun during the course of the movie – and even if
some of the “magic” we see them perform is clearly CGI, there is still fun to
be had being the audience as well. The actors play off each other well, even if
for the most part these actors could do these roles in their sleep – although
to their credit, none of them do. They may not really be pushing themselves,
but they seem to enjoy playing off each other.

The
movie is one of those heist movies that explains to the audience what they are
going to see, and then shows what they just explained – although not quite the
way we expect it to play out. If done well, these films can work amazingly
well. It’s fun to be fooled by a movie. The problem with a movie like Now You
See Me is that it tries so hard to fool the audience right from the start, that
you never really trust the movie. We know from the start the movie isn’t going
to play fair with the audience. It’s like when you go to a magic show, and
spend the whole time looking for the strings holding up the “floating”
magician. When you try as hard as this now does to try and fool the audience,
you can almost guarantee that you won’t. I’m not saying I saw every twist in
the movie coming – just most of them.

The
film was directed by Louis Leterrier, who is best known for action movies like
Unleashed, The Transporter 2, The Incredible Hulk and Clash of the Titans.
Although there aren’t many action scenes in Now You See Me, Leterrier shoots
the movie as if there were. The result is both somewhat exhausting, yet dull.

About Me

I am an accountant, living in Brantford, ON - and although I am married and have beautiful daughter, I still find time to watch a lot of movies. This blog is mostly reviews of new movies - with other musing thrown in as well.